PHILIPSBURG:--- The Departments of Permits and New Projects has presented a plan to the Honorable Minister of VROMI, E.J. Doran to speed up the processing of building permits.
The Minister has agreed to assemble a team from within the Ministry of VROMI, who will work remotely to process the requested permits. This initiative will lead to more permits being issued within a short period, which will enable more construction activities to take place. Therefore, this will stimulate our economy as well as the Government’s day-to-day activities.
The Department of Permits has been faced with the challenge of backlogs dating back to 2008, due to the lack of staff. In 2008 and 2010, dormant permits were identified as “Red Dot”, of which many of those requests were simply terminated even though construction was still carried out.
In recent years, new procedures have been implemented in an effort to streamline the process within the departments. The Minister recognizes primarily, by means of additional staff, that actual results can be achieved in lowering the existing backlog.
This initiative has been derived from the additional staff provided to the Department of Permits in 2019 by the VNG-I, the Association of Municipalities in the Netherlands, which lasted six months.
Furthermore, the Ministry is working closely with the ICT Department to automate many services, such as enabling building permit requests to happen digitally.
In closing, the Minister commends the collaboration of the staff at the Departments for their efforts in this initiative.
